


New Ice

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, it's Antarctica again hell yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 05:33:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19144561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "I love the scene where Pitch tries to convince Jack to join him, mostly because of the heart wrenching sincerity that’s seen from him, especially when he mentions longing for a ‘family’. I read the screen play and it describes that Pitch 'made himself vulnerable’. What if he made himself a little too vulnerable?Here’s the Prompt:When making his offer, Pitch loses himself a little bit and gets all emotional and teary. I wonder how seeing something like this might have influenced Jack’s final decision."Pitch cries, and Jack wants to try to understand, but some things are too irreversible for Jack to forgive. Interpret the past between the Jack, Sandy, and Pitch as you wish. I think there’s some hope here at the end, but Pitch is still in full on megalomaniac asshole mode and Jack still rejects him.





	New Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 11/16/2015.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be cast out? To want to be believed in? To long for…” Pitch’s voice dropped, and no more nightmaresand flew from his hands. “To long for…a family.” He cast his eyes down, shoulders slumped.  
  
 _What on Earth?_  Jack stepped toward him cautiously. If this was a trick—well, Jack hadn’t known Pitch very long, but if he was going to try to trick Jack, he thought he might try to seem clever instead of—what else could it be called?—broken.  
  
A new piece of ice entered the world, just a tiny one, but alert as he was, Jack could feel it clearly. It fell near Pitch. A tear? What—what did Pitch think he was doing, crying after all that he had done?  _You’re forgetting again,_ Jack told himself.  _You don’t know anything about what it’s like to be as old and powerful as the Guardians or Pitch. All you do is watch people. These beings aren’t people in the same way. And neither are you. If you think like the people you watch you’ll never understand._  
  
He knew there were commonalities between them, where he might be able to find sympathy with Pitch. He knew that if Sandy was really gone, none of that sympathy would matter.  
  
Jack clenched his jaw and took another step forward, feeling like the world was tilting wildly beneath him. Could what he didn’t know give him a reason to hope? Or did Pitch think that Jack would be callous enough to forget the one being who had been a silent companion to him over the centuries? The silence hadn’t mattered. The companionship, strange as it was, had.  
  
Could what he didn’t know—what he could find out—give  _Pitch_  some reason to hope? Jack didn’t even know if he wanted that, yet. And where would any of these hopes be anchored after the attack against Bunny?  
  
“Do you know that I can sense your tears when they become ice?” Jack said, his voice steady and calm, deep like thousand year-old-ice.  
  
Pitch reacted to it like it was a bolt of lightning. “They’re not for you!” He nearly yelled, jumping back.  
  
“I know. Believe me, I know,” Jack said, before he could say anything more. “But that was a good answer. If you didn’t want me to see them, that probably means that you’re not faking them.”  
  
Pitch looked at him, bewildered. Jack thought he was being clear enough, but maybe Pitch was just confused because things weren’t going according to his plan anymore. That was good. A few harsh lessons recently had taught him to dislike when Pitch was in control of a situation. He’d have to push forward now, inexorable as a glacier.  
  
“But you should have cried earlier.” Ice formed thickly under Jack’s feet as he walked forward, shielding him from the fallen nightmare sand. “You should have come to me and told me this before you attacked Tooth. If you wanted my sympathy, you shouldn’t have stolen the memories. That put me on the side of all the kids who can’t remember important things, because I know what that feels like. And since the Guardians would be the ones to undo what you did, that put me on their side. And then”—he felt himself getting louder, but he couldn’t reign himself back, not for this—“Sandy. Why. Why would I ever accept your companionship when you took away the closest person I had to a friend? When I saw you shoot him in the back? When I saw you kill him?”  
  
“You don’t know what I did to Sandy! You don’t understand!” Pitch snarled, lunging forward. Jack swept his staff up, blocking Pitch with a wall of transparent ice.  
  
“No, I don’t!” Jack said, as he lowered his staff and the wall drifted away as snow. “I don’t understand what kind of an explanation you could even give to me for what you did! You want me to join you? You never even appeared to me before two days ago! Compare that to centuries of smiles, of waves, of dreamsand that was warm but didn’t hurt like the summer sun did—”  
  
“Damn you! Damn you, I  _know_!” Pitch’s hands flexed, and the ice under Jack’s feet groaned as the sand struggled to break free.  
  
Jack slammed down his staff and tamped the sand down again with another ton of ice. “Maybe someday I’ll want to know why you think you can say that,” Jack said. “Maybe someday I’ll want to know what you belonged to that you were cast out of. But not now. Not when the things we don’t have are things that  _I_  don’t have because of  _you_. Something big will have to change before I’d listen. Something I can barely believe would be possible. So come back then, Pitch. But not now. Now, I never want to see you again.”  
  
Jack started to turn away when the ice shivered underneath him.  
  
“Another thing you don’t understand, Jack, is that I can’t stop now,” Pitch said. His voice sounded like that of someone who would never, could never, cause more ice to appear. “And you’ve shown me too much of what you can do for me to let you go.” He twitched his fingers and nightmaresand streamed up from under the ice in needle-thin ribbons.  
  
“At least you’re taking me on face to face,” Jack said. To tell the truth, though, the sight of the sand easily piercing all his ice sent fear coiling up his spine. And Pitch would know that. Well. Who cared what Pitch knew? Even if Jack was scared, he didn’t have to act like it.  
  
“Oh, but I’m not,” Pitch said. The nightmaresand converged around his outstretched hand, forming a shifting globe, then fell away, revealing Baby Tooth clutched tightly within his fingers. “You value companionship so highly? Well, look who you left in my lair.”  
  
He grinned, though it faltered—later, Jack thought it must have been at the instant when utter loathing burned away any lingering fear. In the moment, though, it didn’t matter.  
  
“I have a trade to make with you, Jack,” Pitch said. 


End file.
